Many types of electronic items are available over computer networks, such as the Internet. Such items include, for example, web pages, bookmarks, digital images, digital videos, etc.
Many users are interested in knowing what items are interesting to other users. Users may demonstrate an interest in an item in a variety of ways. An action that demonstrates an interest in an item is referred to herein as an interest-action.
The interest-actions that are performed by users to indicate an interest in an item often vary based on the nature of the item in which they are interested. For example, users may demonstrate an interest in a web page by retrieving the web page, following a link to the web page, creating pages that include links to the web page, bookmarking the web page, etc. As another example, users may demonstrate an interest in a tag by tagging other items (such as web pages, photos, videos) with the tag. With respect to videos, users may demonstrate an interest by following links to the videos, playing the videos or downloading the videos. These are merely some examples of the various items in which a user may be interested, and the types of ways that interests may be demonstrated.
The degree to which users have demonstrated interest in an item is generally referred to herein as the popularity of the item. The popularity of an item may be determined by counting how many interest-actions are performed relative to the item. Once the popularity of an item has been determined, the popularity may be used as a factor in a variety of contexts. For example, a search engine may use the popularity of items as a factor in determining how to rank search results that list the items.
In addition to knowing what items are historically interesting to other users, some users are particularly interested in knowing what items have recently become interesting to other users. In other words, users are interest in knowing what items have recently experienced an “interest burst”. Such items are referred to herein as interest-burst items.
While the identity of interest-burst items may be interesting to users, determining which items qualify as interest-burst items at any given point in time may be difficult. Further, the value of any service that attempts to identify interest-burst items would be diminished if spammers are able to artificially generate interest bursts for items in which the general population is not interested.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.